Serendipity in DNA Research

Once again, something remarkably serendipitous has occurred in my genealogy/DNA research.

A few years ago, my father’s cousin learned he had a daughter he had unknowingly fathered in the Philippines during his service in the Vietnam War. Things like this are happening all the time now with the inundation of direct-to-consumer DNA testing available. People are finding out deeply buried secrets about paternity and parentage; connections that might not otherwise had been discovered if not for the ubiquity of DNA testing.

The organization that brought my Cousin Anna Lisa to our awareness is called Father Founded. They are dedicated to supporting Amerasians, individuals of mixed American and Filipino heritage, in their efforts to connect with their American birth fathers, typically former GIs. These connections can have profound impacts of the individuals involved and their families; sometimes negatively but hopefully positively, as was the case for my family. Sometimes the birth fathers reject their Filipino children, which is truly heartbreaking.

I have worked on two cases for this organization. In my most recent case the man had two rather high DNA matches, who I will call M and C. They turned out to be siblings to one another. I can tell from the amount they shared with my client that they were most likely first cousins to whomever was my client's bio-father. Those top matches share 481 cMs ad 396 cMs respectively with my client; cMs stands for centimorgans, the unit of measurement for DNA. Those sibling's had a mother who was an only child and their father only had one sibling. That one sibling had two sons. It could only be one of those sons who fathered my client.

After sending Ancestry messages to my clients top matches, I went looking for M and C on social media. Not only did I find that they were both FaceBook friends with the one living, possible bio-father, M and I had a mutual FaceBook friend; a woman who grew up across the street from my grandparents in the home my Cousin Anna Lisa's bio-dad grew up in. Small, small world.